Week 8: Stuck as a Ghost

You, a normal person, die with no particular grudge and are now a ghost. Somehow, it's totally rational that you spend your time misplacing things, keeping at the edge of people's vision and going bump in the night.

Wasn't expecting it. Are we ever really expecting it to actually happen- the moment of death? For me, it was still a future possibility, like my morality was an appointment I may skip in favor of sitting on the couch eating, or going to brunch with a friend. 

But it happened, and now I'm dead. I should be cozy up in heaven, or even tolerating hell, but I've been cursed with being a ghost. Yeah, I know. Sounds ridiculous. I almost couldn't believe it when it happened to me, but I figured it out quickly. 

"Oh my god, she's not breathing!" A middle-aged woman was frantically breathing on my face as she leaned over my crumpled body. I was hit by a car when I was crossing the street (in a crosswalk, thank you very much) and died on impact. Bitch was going 45 in a 25 and texting at the same time. I think she eventually went to jail for manslaughter, but that's beside the point. If I hadn't died, I could have gotten free tuition and pity flowers. Instead I got death. Sucks.

I realized I was a ghost when I sat up from my body. 

"I'm okay," I muttered to the lady, trying to wave her off. I felt surprisingly good actually, so I looked down at my body to see the damage. When I looked I could see the duplicate of me, still laying, dead as a fucking doornail. 

"Fucking A."

I got up and stretched (out of habit, I really did feel great) and looked around. A small crowd was surrounding my dead body, the middle aged woman now crying.

"Yeah, you better cry! You killed me!" I scolded her, shaking my head.  Another woman is calling 911. 

"I think she's dead. Bring an ambulance right away!" 

The ambulance whirled in a lazy fifteen minutes later, and I watched as they confirmed my body was dead and hauled me away. The police had the woman in handcuffs, her face puffy from crying. Two hours later, the scene of the crime was back to normal, woman carted off to jail, her car towed to the station, and my body, gone. The trees shuffled in the wind, the birds kept chirping, and I was stuck as a ghost. 

I wanted to have some fun as a ghost on my first day. Being invisible, I found out, was awesome. I could open doors, move coffee cups, trip people, blow on the backs of their necks so they get that creepy feeling, and more. 

But really I wanted to get back at a girl named Stacey. Stacey had been my high school bully, and since I was a ghost I was going to take advantage of the situation and stalk her incessantly.

For days I would hover at the end of her bed, rustling her covers to wake her. I would trip her going up stairs, spill her coffee cup, move her keys to absurd places (in the fridge, on top of the toilet, in the kitty litter box) and as the days went on, she thought she was becoming crazy. She would talk to me, or the idea of someone there, regularly.

I became part of her day to day. As the days went on, I went from annoying her to helping her. I don't know what got into me. I'd find her missing sock that she was swearing about, and place it nicely on her bed to find. Or I'd close the fridge door if she forgot to close it all the way (frequent habit). 

"What am I doing?" I said, as I organized her DVDs in alphabetical order. A crash sounded behind me and I turned. I didn't notice Stacey had come home, and her grocery bags now littered the floor beneath her. I looked down and realized I was still holding a DVD. I'm sure it looked like the DVD was floating in the air. I don't know about ghost rules, but I'm pretty sure that's against them. I waited for her to blink and dropped the DVD to the ground. 

"Okay, whoever you are, a ghost, a spirit I know you're there," she finally said. My empty chest started beating faster. "You need to go. I can't enter this place without something being moved or organized. I've talked to my therapist and she thinks I'm doing it in my sleep, but I know I'm not. You need to go. You're making me sound crazy to everyone else, no one believes me. But I know what I just saw." She walked over to where I am and looks down at the DVD collection. "Are you seriously alphabetizing my DVD collection? Who are you?" She looked down at me, her gaze a couple inches to the left. I shifted so it felt like she was really looking at me. "You need to go. Now." 

My heart dropped. But if I didn't do this, what would I do? Doesn't she understand that I have no where to go and nothing to do? I could feel a meanness creeping up inside me, and without really thinking I reached forward and pulled the DVDs to the floor, spilling the contents everywhere. 

She gasped and jumped back. "See? I knew it! I knew it! I'm not crazy. You're there. And you need to go!" She flung her arm towards the door, pointing. 

So I left. I could hear her lock the doors behind me, bolting herself in.

I looked up at the sky and still the trees shuffled in the wind, the birds kept chirping, and I, the immortal being, was stuck as a ghost.